Will the World’s Cheapest Tablet Lift Countries Out of Poverty?

Dominating the tablet computer market, Apple's iPad 2 currently
sells at a starting price of $499. Its biggest competitors at Samsung or
BlackBerry offer theirs for about $100-200 cheaper. Even what seems the
most affordable option right now, Amazon's Kindle Fire, is priced at
$199. But, as of today, for as little as $35 you can own a tablet
computer - thanks to India. This is huge in the economy of development
technologies, but is it enough to close the digital divide?

In the U.S., most of us live in a world made up of choices. Whether
we're deciding between which type of pasta to go with or which
smartphone to upgrade to, we're bombarded with decisions and faced with
hundreds of manufacturers and models. On the other side of the globe,
most people aren't making the same decisions; accessing a luxury and
accessing a necessity differ in meaning. Owning the latest tablet
technology is hardly a priority when finding shelter overhead or keeping
your job rank significantly before anything else. Much like most forms
of technology, the market for tablet computers is still only limited to
the world's most industrialized nations.

An overwhelming 41 percent of the Indian population falls below the
international poverty line, and the Aakash tablet aims to transform this
harsh reality into an opportunity for developmental growth. The Indian
government is subsidizing the tablet to offer it for as low as $35 for
students and teachers and $60 for all other consumers. The tablet itself
is being developed by a small Canadian company called DataWind, whose
hope for this tablet is to target India's lack of educational resources.

Although Aakash offers the most basic functionality compared to other
powerful tablets, it does operate on Google's Android platform with
32GB memory. The 660 MHz processor is supplied by American company
Conexant Systems, but some predicted drawbacks may be a slower machine
and less responsive touch screen. It's also offering WiFi capability to
encourage wider Internet usage in the country, where, at a glance, only
about 5 out of every 100 people are online.

Aakash is actually one technology among other emerging cheap
innovations sweeping India right now. Back in 2009, Indian carmaker Tata
Motors built the world's cheapest car - the Tata Nano. At approximately
$2,000, or 100,000 rupees, the Tata Nano was a small city car that
fulfilled the poor people's dreams of owning a car. This year, the car
may see heavier exports to other developing countries as redesigns and
enhancements continue.

India has even managed to offer the most affordable open-heart
surgery in the world. A hospital established in the Cayman Islands
provides medical services for those seeking low-cost care, which even in
the U.S. is a never-ending problem of access. Typically, open-heart
operations in the U.S. can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000, with
the numbers varying depending on procedural complexity. For just $2,000,
Dr. Devi Shetty and others at his hospital can perform the same
surgeries.

Up until now, it seems as though India's model of growth continues to
be driven by the simple principle of economies of scale. The production
costs of expensive goods and services are driven down as output
increases at high volumes. In the technological sector, the important
question consumers are concerned about is whether low costs mean
sacrificing functionality.

Although the future of affordable technology and the direction it's
progressing in is still unclear, we can always consider what we've
learned from history. In present day, South Korea is promising for its
schools to go paperless by 2015 so as to integrate digital textbooks and
tablets. In 105 AD, ancient China invented and spread the art of making
paper to the rest of the world. Papermaking later industrialized and
has become a technology we very much take for granted now. Then, people
were motivated by inventing something for us to write on. Right now,
we're motivated by convenience and preserving our finite resources, and
India is trying to let us do that for as small a cost as possible.

Tablets may one day replace paper, but what they have in common is
the demand-driven economy they thrive in. Just like when paper was first
available, not everyone had access to it. It took centuries upon
centuries to bring the production cost of paper down to its value today.
If tablets are being sold for $35 in India, this could be the start of
low-cost, first-world technology making its way into third-world market
economies. Yet, it is hard to gauge how a $35 tablet will make long-term
impacts on India's educational issues, let alone alleviate poverty in
the country. In reality, ending our digital divide will require more
than introducing technology in undeveloped nations, but giving everyone
the chance to own a piece of current technology could be a small start
to addressing a growing global challenge.